About this conversation

Alexander Beiner is a filmmaker and writer whose documentary “Leviathan” Daniela reads as a portrait of why a fundamental transition is needed. The conversation opens with his central argument: that Western civilization has inverted its hierarchy of reality. What is most real, embodied presence, authentic relationship, the private interior life, has been pushed aside by abstraction. The financial system is one example he reaches for, where most money is created from nothing by private banks, but the point is broader: again and again, fantasy has become more primary than lived experience.

From there the conversation moves into the practical question of how people learn to inhabit relational spaces more fully, given that human connection is genuinely difficult. Beiner draws on Seth Godin’s definition of culture as “people like us do things like this” to frame how shared values make that easier, and he references the work of facilitator Trish Blaine on what he calls the other person problem. He is drawn to psychedelics as one among several technologies of transformation, not as a shortcut but as a way of temporarily dissolving the abstractions that keep people from experiencing what is actually most real. The conversation holds a productive tension around the question at the series’ heart: whether a better future is something to be actively co-created or something that has to be allowed to emerge, and Beiner is honest that he does not have a clean answer.